The Plant Read online

  “'Before long his tears were mingled with mine'?” he said in a low just-talking-to-myself voice. “'Each word has been like a lash across my heart'? Jesus, I wonder if she's ever considered writing bodice-rippers. There just might be something there.”

  “Cut it out, Roger. That isn't funny.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he said, and looked at me with an expression of sympathy that was at the same time deeply comforting and deeply embarrassing. “I doubt if much of anything seems very funny to you now.”

  “Not even slightly,” I agreed.

  “I know how much you love her.”

  “You couldn't.”

  “Yeah, I could. It's on your face, John.” We drank without saying anything for a little while. The maitre d' came bearing menus and Roger waved him away with barely a look.

  “I have been married three times and divorced three times,” he said. “It didn't get better, or easier. It actually seemed to get worse, like bumping the same sore place time after time. The J. Geils Band was right. Love stinks.” His new drink came and he sipped it. I half-expected him to say Women! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!, but he didn't.

  “Women,” I said, beginning to feel like a figment of my own imagination. “Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.”

  “Oh yes you can,” he said, and although his eyes were on me he was quite clearly looking somewhere else. “You can live without 'em quite easily. But life without a woman, even if she's a shrew and a nag, sours a man. It turns an essential part of his soul into a pimple.”

  “Roger—”

  He held up one hand. “You may not believe it, but we're almost done talking about this,” he said. “We may get drunk and maudlin and run our gums on the subject, but we'll only be talking about how we've got a skinful, which is the only subject drunks ever talk about, really. I just want to tell you that I'm sincerely sorry Ruth has left you, and I am sorry for your pain. I'd share it if I could.”

  “Thanks, Roger,” I said, my voice a little hoarse. For a second there were three or four Rogers sitting across the table from me and I had to wipe my eyes. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You're welcome.” He took a sip of his drink. “For the moment let us leave what I'm helpless to reverse or alleviate and talk about your future. John, I want you to stay with Zenith House, at least until June. Maybe until the end of the year, but at least until June.”

  “I can't,” I said. “If I stayed I'd just be another millstone around your neck, and I think you've got enough of those already.”

  “I wouldn't be happy to see you go either time,” he said as if he hadn't heard. He had taken the cigarette case he carried-it was too old and scratched and beaten to seem like an affectation-from his inside jacket pocket and was selecting a Kent from among what appeared to be several plump joints. “But I could let you go in June if we look like we're getting on our feet. If Enders swings the axe, I'd like you to stay on until the end of the year and help me wind things up in orderly fashion.” He looked at me with something in his eyes that was very close to naked pleading. “Except for me, you're the only sane person at Zenith House. Oh, I guess none of them are as crazy as General Hecksler-although sometimes I wonder about Riddley-but it's only a matter of degree. I'm asking you not to leave me alone in this purgatory, and that's what Zenith House is this year.”

  “Roger, if I could-if I—”

  “Have you made plans, then?”

  “No... not exactly... but—”

  “Not planning to go out and confront her, in spite of what this letter says?” He tapped it with a fingernail and then lighted his cigarette.

  “No.” The idea had certainly crossed my mind, but I didn't need Ruth to tell me it was a bad idea. In a movie the girl might suddenly realize her mistake when she saw the hero of her life standing before her, one hastily packed bag in his hand, shoulders drooping and his face tired from the transcontinental flight on the redeye, but in real life I would only turn her against me completely and forever or provoke some sort of extreme guilt reaction. And I might very well provoke an extreme pugilistic reaction in Mr. Toby Anderson, whose name I have already come to cordially hate. And although I have never seen him (the only thing she forgot to include, the jilted lover said bitterly, was a picture of my replacement), I keep picturing a young cleft-chinned man, very big, who looks, in my imagination at least, as if he belongs in a Los Angeles Rams uniform. I have no problem with landing in traction for my beloved-there is, in fact, a masochistic part of me which would probably welcome it-but I would be embarrassed, and I might cry. It disgusts me to admit it, but I cry rather easily.

  Roger was watching me closely but not saying anything, merely twiddling the stem of his drink glass.

  And there was something else, wasn't there? Or maybe it was really the only thing, and the others are just rationalizations. In the last couple of months I've gotten a big dose of craziness. Not just the occasional bag-lady who rails at you on the street or the drunks in bars who want to tell you all about the nifty new betting systems with which they mean to take Atlantic City by storm, but real sicko craziness. And being exposed to that is like standing in front of the open door of a furnace in which a lot of very smelly garbage is being burned.

  Could I be driven into a rage at seeing them together, her new fella-he of the odious football-player name-maybe stroking her ass with the blase unconcern of acknowledged ownership? Me, John Kenton, graduate of Brown and president of the blah-blah-blah? Bespectacled John Kenton? Could I perhaps even be driven to some really irrevocable act-an act that might be more likely if he did in fact turn out to be as big as his odious name suggests? Shrieky old John Kenton, who mistook a bunch of special effects for genuine snuff photos?

  The answer is, I don't know. But I know this: I awoke from a terrible dream last night, a dream in which I had just thrown battery acid into her face. That was what really scared me, scared me so badly I had to sleep the rest of the night with the light on.

  Not his.

  Hers.

  Ruth's face.

  “No,” I said again, and then poured the rest of my drink over the dryness I heard in my voice. “No, I think that would be very unwise.”

  “Then you could stay on.”

  “Yes, but I couldn't work.” I looked at him with some exasperation. My head was starting to buzz. It wasn't a very cheerful buzz, but all the same I signaled the waiter, who had been lurking nearby, for another. “Right now I'm having trouble remembering how to tie my own shoelaces.” No. Wrong. That was hip and it sounded good, but it wasn't the truth-my shoelaces had nothing to do with it. “Roger, I'm depressed.”

  “Bereaved people shouldn't sell the house after the funeral,” Roger said, and in my state of buzziness that seemed extremely witty-worthy of H. L. Mencken, in fact. I laughed. Roger smiled, but I could tell he was serious. “It's true,” he said. “One of the few interesting courses I ever took in college was called the Psychology of Human Stress-one of these nifty little blocks they give you to fill up the final eight weeks of your senior year after you're done student teaching—”

  “You were going to be a teacher?” I asked startled. I couldn't see Roger teaching-and then, all of a sudden I could.

  “I did teach for six years,” Roger said. “Four in high school and two in elementary. But that's beside the point. This course took up human stress situations like marriage, divorce, imprisonment, and bereavement. The course wasn't really a Signposts for Better Living sort of deal, but if you kept your eyes open you couldn't help but notice a few. One was this thing about living out at least the first six months of a really deep bereavement in the house where you and your loved one were living when the death occurred.”

  “Roger, this is not the same thing.” I sipped my new drink, which tasted just like my old drink. It occurred to me that I was getting fried. It also occurred to me that I didn't care in the slightest.

  “But it is,” He said, leaning solemnly toward me. “In a queer way
Ruth is dead to you now. You may see her from time to time over the years, but if the break is as final and complete as that letter sounds, the Ruth we could call your Lover-Ruth is dead to you. And you are grieving.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him he was full of shit, and then I closed it again because he was at least partly right. That's what carrying a torch really means, isn't it? You're grieving for the lover who died-the lover who is dead to you, anyway.

  “People tend to think of 'grief' and 'depression' as interchangeable terms,” Roger said. His tone was a good deal more pedantic than usual, and his eyes were rimmed with red. It occurred to me that Roger was getting fried, too. “They're really not. There's an element of depression in grief, of course, but there are a whole slew of other feelings as well, ranging from guilt and sadness to anger and relief. A person who runs from the scene of those feelings is a person in retreat from the inevitable. He arrives in a new place and discovers he feels exactly the same mixture of emotions we call grief-except now he feels homesickness as well, and a feeling of having lost the essential linkage which eventually turn grief into remembrance.”

  “You remember all of that from an eight-week psychology block course you took eighteen years ago?” Roger sipped modestly at his drink. “Sure,” he said. “I got an A.”

  “Bullshit you do.”

  “I also banged the grad student who taught the course. What a piece of ass she was.”

  “It's not my apartment I was planning to leave,” I said, although I had no idea if I intended to leave it or not... and I know that wasn't his point anyway.

  “It wouldn't matter whether you left that two-room cockroach condo or not,” he said. “You know what I'm talking about here. Your job is your house.”

  “Yeah? Well the roof is sure leaking,” I said, and even that seemed sort of witty to me. I was getting fried, all right.

  “I want you to help me fix the leak, John,” he said, leaning forward earnestly. “That's what I'm saying. That's why I asked you out tonight. And your agreement is the only thing capable of mitigating what is undoubtedly going to be one of the most beastly hangovers of my life. Help us both. Stay on.”

  “You'll pardon me if all of this sounds just a little bit self-serving and fortuitous.”

  He sat back. “I respect you,” he said a trifle coldly, “but I also like you, John. If I didn't I wouldn't be breaking my ass to keep you on.” He hesitated, seemed on the point of saying something more, then didn't. His eyes said it for him: And humiliating myself by damn' near begging.

  “I just don't understand why you're trying so hard,” I said. “I mean, I'm flattered, but—”

  “Because if anyone can bring in a book or create an idea that will keep Zenith from going belly-up, it's you,” he said. There was an intensity in his eyes I found almost frightening. “I know how fucking embarrassed you were by the whole Detweiller business, but—”

  “Please,” I said. “Let's not add insult to injury.”

  “I had no intention of even bringing it up,” he said. “It's just that your very openness to such an off-the-wall proposition—”

  “It was off the wall, all right—”

  “Will you shut up and listen? Your response to the Detweiller query showed you're still alive to a potentially commercial idea. Herb or Bill would simply have dropped his letter in the circular file.”

  “And we all would have been a lot better off,” I said, but I saw where he was going and would be lying if I didn't say I was flattered... and that I felt a little better about the Detweiller affair for the first time since my humiliation at the police station.

  “This time,” he agreed. “But those guys also would have turned down V. C. Andrews with her Toys in the Attic series, or some brand new idea. Boom, into the circular file and then back to contemplating their navels.” He paused. “I need you, Johnny, and I think it would be good if you stayed-for you, for me, for Zenith. There's no other way I can put it. Think it over and give me your answer. I'll accept it either way.”

  “You'd be paying me for the equivalent of cutting out paper dolls, Roger.”

  “That's a chance I'm willing to take.”

  I thought about it. I'd started to clean out my desk that day and hadn't gotten very far-to paraphrase Poe, who would have thought the old desk could have had so much crap in it? Or maybe it was just me, and that crack about not even being able to tie my own shoelaces wasn't so wrong, after all. I'd gotten two empty cardboard cartons from Riddley's room (which smells oddly green lately, like fresh marijuana-and no, I didn't see any) and did nothing but stare from one to the other. Maybe with a little more time I could at least complete the elementary job of cleaning up my old life before starting some unimaginable new one. It's just that I've felt so fucking dreary. “Suppose we table the resignation until the end of the month,” I said. “would that ease your mind?”

  He smiled. “It's not the best I'd hoped for,” he said, “but it's not the worst I was afraid of, either. I'll take it. And now I think we better order while we can still sit up straight.”

  We ordered steaks, and ate them, but by then my mouth was too numb to taste much. I suppose I just ought to be grateful that no one had to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on either of us.

  As we were leaving-holding onto each other, assisted by the anxious maitre d' (who no doubt only wanted to get us the fuck out of there before we broke something), Roger told me: “Something else I learned in that psychology course—”

  “What did you say they called it? The Psychology of Damaged Souls?”

  We were outside by then, and his cackles drifted away in little frosty plumes of vapor. “It was the Psychology of Human Stress, but I actually like yours better.” Roger energetically flagged down a cab, whose driver would shortly be very sorry he picked us up. “It also said that it helps to keep a diary.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I haven't kept a diary since I was eleven.”

  “Well what the hell,” he said. “look for it, John. Maybe it's still around somewhere.” And he went off into another wild run of cackles which only ended when he leaned over and puked nonchalantly on his own shoes.

  He did it twice more on the way to his apartment building at 20th and Park Avenue South, leaning as far out the window as he could (which wasn't too far since it was one of those Plymouths where the rear windows will only roll down about halfway and there's a grim little yellow and black sign that says DO NOT FORCE THE WINDOW!) and just sort of blowing it into the slipstream and then settling back with that same nonchalant expression on his face. Our driver, a Nigerian or Somalian by his accent, was horrified. He pulled over to the curb and ordered us out. I was willing, but Roger sat tight.

  “My friend,” he said, “I would get out if I could walk. Since I cannot, you must convey us hence.”

  “I want you out my caib, good sah.”

  “So far I have done you the courtesy of vomiting out the window,” Roger said with that same nonchalant and rather pleasant expression on his face. “It hasn't been easy because of the angle, but I have done it. I think in another few seconds I am going to vomit again. If you don't convey us hence, I am going to do it in your ashtray.”

  At Roger's building I assisted him into the lobby and saw him into the elevator with his apartment key in his hand. Then I wove my way back to the cab.

  “You git annoder cab, mon,” the driver said. “You just pay me and git annoder. I don't want to no mo convey you hence.”

  “It's just down to Soho,” I said, “and I'll give you a hell of a tip. Also, I don't feel like puking.” This was a bit of a lie, I'm afraid.

  He took me, and from the look of my wallet the next day I did indeed give him a hell of a tip. And I actually managed to make it upstairs before throwing up. Although once I started I didn't stop for quite awhile.

  I didn't go in the next day-it was all I could do to get out of bed. My head felt monstrous, bloated. I called in around three and got Bill Gelb, who told me Roger hadn't shown,
either.

  Since then I have done a lot of crying and have had mostly sleepless nights, but perhaps Roger wasn't so wrongthe only hours that I feel even halfway myself are the ones spent on the 9th floor at 490 Park. Riddley has just about had to sweep me out the door along with his red sawdust the last two nights. Maybe there is something to that old “he threw himself into his work” crap after all. Even this diary idea feels right... although it may only be the relief of finally being done with my dreadful pastoral novel.

  Maybe I'll stay on after all. Onward and upward... if there is any upward left for me. Man, I still can't believe she's gone. And I still haven't lost hope that she may change her mind.

  March 21, 1981 Mr. John “Poop-Shit” Kenton Zenith House Publishers, Home of the Pus-Bags 490 Kaka Avenue South New York, New York 10017

  Dear Poop-Shit,

  Did you think I had forgotten you? My plans for revenge will go forward no matter WHAT! happens to me! You and all your fellow “Pus-Bags” will soon feel the WRATH! of CARLOS!!

  I have covened the powers of Hell,

  Carlos Detweiller

  In Transit, U. S. A.

  PS-Smell anything “green” yet, Mr. Poop-Shit Kenton?

  From John Kenton's diary. March 22, 1981

  Had a letter from Carlos today. I laughed until I shrieked. Herb Porter came on the run, wanted to know if I was dying or what. I showed it to him. He read it and only frowned. He wanted to know what I was laughing about-didn't I take this Detweiller fellow seriously?

  “Oh, I take him seriously... sort of,” I said.

  “Then why in hell are you laughing?”

  “I guess I just must be a warped plank in the great floor of the universe,” I said, and then went off into even madder gales of laughter.

  Frowning so deeply now that the lines in his face had become crevasses, Herb laid the letter on the corner of my desk and then backed into the doorway, as if whatever I had might be catching. “I don't know why you're so weird lately,” he said, “but I'll give you some good advice anyway. Get yourself some personal protection. And if you need psychiatric help, John—” I just kept laughing-by then I'd worked myself into a semihysterical frenzy. Herb stared at me a moment longer, then slammed the door and walked away. Just as well, really, as I finished by crying.